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Not this again. I full well know what this is going to turn into. I'm bowing out this time.
When are they going to "keep censorship away" from Red Candle games? Can anyone defend what GOG did in that instance?
I'm concerned that CD Projekt RED will self censor its games to not offend people. Many western companies have been doing this of late. I want quality stories which depict realistic interactions between real people; not flavour of the month characters and issues of the current day injected into storylines.
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my name is grompy catte: Oh they definitely have a choice, I was just clarifying that the choice is "sell it or don't sell it" not "sell the censored version or sell the uncut version". GOG does not have the sway to demand anything.

I'm not sure I'd characterise not selling the game as "doing something about it". It's not as if GOG refusing to sell it will change anything, the publisher isn't going to go "Noooo! This is going to destroy the sales potential of this game!". They'll just shrug and go back to Steam.
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Time4Tea: I don't agree - you could substitute 'censorship' here for 'DRM'. Many big games are available DRM-free on GOG, because GOG has over the years insisted that games will not be sold on the store unless they are DRM-free and they have (for the most part) held a firm position on that. So, I think you are underestimating the amount of influence GOG has on publishers.

I can't see any reason that GOG (if they wanted to) couldn't have a similar impact on censorship as they have had for DRM.
And DRM-free was a battle that GOG chose from day one. I don't recall them ever having a hardline anti-censorship stance and I don't particularly want them to start as it would exclude games I'd want to buy.

GOG's DRM stance excludes games that people who don't care about DRM might want to buy but the solution for them is simple - buy from another store.
If you want a store that excludes games on the grounds of censorship then perhaps you need to look for a store that has that as a USP.
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zakius: bug of their forum engine isn't my fault though
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my name is grompy catte: How is that a bug? If you have your chat turned off then you have your chat turned off. The setting does what it says.
it says it blocks messages from strangers, but I should be able to initiate the conversation with no issues
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my name is grompy catte: How is that a bug? If you have your chat turned off then you have your chat turned off. The setting does what it says.
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zakius: it says it blocks messages from strangers, but I should be able to initiate the conversation with no issues
Why would they allow you to send messages to someone but forbid them from replying? It doesn't really make any sense. If you block someone you can't send them messages, you can't send messages to anyone who can't send messages to you.
Post edited October 18, 2022 by my name is grompy catte
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my name is grompy catte: How is that a bug? If you have your chat turned off then you have your chat turned off. The setting does what it says.
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zakius: it says it blocks messages from strangers, but I should be able to initiate the conversation with no issues
To initiate a conversation with the forum mods, you have to enable your PM settings first.
So far, you have PMs disabled (attachment #1).

Yes, I know and I agree, that's stupid, but that's the way GOG wants it to be done.

To change your PM settings go to:
"your account" --> "orders & settings" --> "privacy" --> under "profile, friends & chat, click the drop down menu besides "allow chat messages from" and --> change the "nobody" to "everyone".

After that you should be able to contact the forum mods.

Either via the links offered in this thread: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/forum_regulations/post1 or via the drop down menu left of their comments (attachment #2).
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zakius: it says it blocks messages from strangers, but I should be able to initiate the conversation with no issues
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my name is grompy catte: Why would they allow you to send messages to someone but forbid them from replying? It doesn't really make any sense. If you block someone you can't send them messages, you can't send messages to anyone who can't send messages to you.
initiating the conversation would allow the person I messaged to reply obviously, that's how all sane systems of this kind work
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my name is grompy catte: Why would they allow you to send messages to someone but forbid them from replying? It doesn't really make any sense. If you block someone you can't send them messages, you can't send messages to anyone who can't send messages to you.
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zakius: initiating the conversation would allow the person I messaged to reply obviously, that's how all sane systems of this kind work
Still, since you take the text literally, it doesn't say "allow chat to be initiated by" but "allow chat messages from", so exactly what my name is grompy catte said...
(Sure, it'd be better worded as "allow chat with", but works this way too. And when you see that you can't send messages to anyone, shouldn't be hard to figure out.)
Post edited October 19, 2022 by Cavalary
The review censorship by GOG has goten out of control, If I ever buy another game from GOG will be after reading reviews on external websites rather than here on GOG as they censor negative reviews to try and improve their sales, I find Steam to be much better regarding the censorship issue in today's Day.
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Tuttle757: The review censorship by GOG has goten out of control, If I ever buy another game from GOG will be after reading reviews on external websites rather than here on GOG as they censor negative reviews to try and improve their sales, I find Steam to be much better regarding the censorship issue in today's Day.
I see plenty of real negative reviews on games. The "reviews" GOG removes are things like "game has a female lead = SJW rubbish".
Such non-reviews reflect badly on GOG and GOG's userbase and would make people reluctant to release their games here.
And even then, GOG doesn't even delete all such examples. I would delete these in a heartbeat, but the fact that GOG has left them there further weakens your point.
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Post edited October 20, 2022 by my name is grompy catte
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Tuttle757: The review censorship by GOG has goten out of control, If I ever buy another game from GOG will be after reading reviews on external websites rather than here on GOG as they censor negative reviews to try and improve their sales, I find Steam to be much better regarding the censorship issue in today's Day.
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my name is grompy catte: I see plenty of real negative reviews on games. The "reviews" GOG removes are things like "game has a female lead = SJW rubbish".
Such non-reviews reflect badly on GOG and GOG's userbase and would make people reluctant to release their games here.
And even then, GOG doesn't even delete all such examples. I would delete these in a heartbeat, but the fact that GOG has left them there further weakens your point.
I wouldn't expect to see many, if any censored negative reviews here.

The examples are kinda funny, though I don't see how they weaken Tuttle's point, nor how they reflect badly on gog. They are user (not gog's own) reviews and their helpful (or rather heavily unhelpful) ratio voted by the userbase shows exactly that. However god forbid when the whole frontpage of most helpful reviews are negative ones, esp. at release or close to expected peak revenue/sale. That's when the big brother comes in and stuff conveniently disappears. At least steam has that off-topic filter that you can enable/disable, so you can see reviews deemed OT if you desire, though to be fair the really (and I mean really explicit) offensive reviews do get pulled there too. Here on gog it is more like: "Oh your review interferes with our plan, or you hurt devs's feelings by calling their lazy remaster dim? Off with yer head, boy!".

Btw I got the whole Blade runner "enhanced" release with review censorship in ptsd-like flashbacks again. Well thanks for reminding me guys, I guess, I really tried to forget that one along with having to go through the whole "customer experience" support ticket.
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my name is grompy catte: I see plenty of real negative reviews on games. The "reviews" GOG removes are things like "game has a female lead = SJW rubbish".
Such non-reviews reflect badly on GOG and GOG's userbase and would make people reluctant to release their games here.
And even then, GOG doesn't even delete all such examples. I would delete these in a heartbeat, but the fact that GOG has left them there further weakens your point.
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Spectrum_Legacy: I wouldn't expect to see many, if any censored negative reviews here.

The examples are kinda funny, though I don't see how they weaken Tuttle's point, nor how they reflect badly on gog. They are user (not gog's own) reviews and their helpful (or rather heavily unhelpful) ratio voted by the userbase shows exactly that. However god forbid when the whole frontpage of most helpful reviews are negative ones, esp. at release or close to expected peak revenue/sale. That's when the big brother comes in and stuff conveniently disappears. At least steam has that off-topic filter that you can enable/disable, so you can see reviews deemed OT if you desire, though to be fair the really (and I mean really explicit) offensive reviews do get pulled there too. Here on gog it is more like: "Oh your review interferes with our plan, or you hurt devs's feelings by calling their lazy remaster dim? Off with yer head, boy!".

Btw I got the whole Blade runner "enhanced" release with review censorship in ptsd-like flashbacks again. Well thanks for reminding me guys, I guess, I really tried to forget that one along with having to go through the whole "customer experience" support ticket.
My entire point was that if GOG simply deleted negative reviews as Tuttle claimed then we wouldn't be able to find negative reviews.
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my name is grompy catte: My entire point was that if GOG simply deleted negative reviews as Tuttle claimed then we wouldn't be able to find negative reviews.
Maybe I could relate to and put his post into context a bit more as my review was pulled too. Although it might be easy to misunderstand if you don't have a similar experience, unless it was meant to just disparage his post. So no, not every negative review is pulled, obviously it's not so black&white... nowhere near that. All one needs to do is to select a random game and click at "most critical" review filter and see what remains. Older releases I don't recall being as affected (if at all) as the more recent ones.

I agree with him since I know that it is happening (mainly around release/critical sales in recent times) and overall it's getting worse (subjectively speaking) probably due to changes and attitude shift within gog itself. Oh and then we have these wonderful pr news like yesterday with power-buzzwords like game preservation, making them last forever, being gamer-first platform, etc to contrast with reality and things mentioned in this topic, and elsewhere on the forum.
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Spectrum_Legacy: Maybe I could relate to and put his post into context a bit more as my review was pulled too.
I'm guessing from your previous post that your review for Blade Runner Enhanced Edition was removed? Were you purely reviewing the quality of the EE or were you doing something tangential to that like calling out Nightdive? I too have negative impressions of the EE but I did not review it as I had no intention of buying it based on what I knew about it.